New 'Flesh-eating' MRSA Superbug threatens Britain
Pastor Dale Morgan
New 'Flesh-eating' MRSA Superbug threatens Britain*
By Caroline Gammell and Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
Last Updated: 2:29am GMT 16/01/2008
A potentially deadly and highly drug resistant strain of MRSA has
developed which can lead to a flesh-eating form of pneumonia,
researchers have warned.
New MRSA strain
The USA300 strain is spreading outside hospitals into the general population
Spreading rapidly among gay men in several major US cities, the bug can
cause boils as large as tennis balls, blood poisoning or a necrotising
condition which eats away at a person's lungs.
The type of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) was
identified in gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
Resistant to most front-line antibiotic drugs, the new strain is a far
more vicious form of MRSA, which is commonly found in hospitals.
It is thought to be spread by sexual contact, researchers reported in
the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Experts, who found sexually active gay men in San Francisco were 13
times more likely to be infected than heterosexuals, fear promiscuous
gay or bisexual men could spread the new bug to the general community,
mirroring the infection route behind the early HIV epidemic of the 1980s.
The strain is also prevalent among injecting drug users and players of
contact sports such as wrestling or American football.
"Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly
unstoppable,” said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of
California, San Francisco who led the study.
“That’s why we’re trying to spread the message of prevention.”
In San Francisco’s Castro district, home to the highest concentration of
gay people in the US, about one in 588 people are carrying the
multi-drug resistant bug.
"We probably had it here first, and now it is spreading elsewhere,” said
Dr Diep. “This is a national problem, and San Francisco is at the
epicenter.”
The new strain, first detected in a San Francisco patient in 2003, is a
version of a recently identified community form of MRSA known as USA300
but even harder to treat.
The USA300 strain was first identified in 1999 after it killed four
young children in North Dakota and has since become a serious problem,
responsible for the majority of admissions for infectious diseases in US
hospitals.
Although only two cases of the lethal strain have been recorded in the
UK, experts fear it may only be a matter of time before it becomes
established in Britain.
Dr Diep said: "These multi-drug resistant infections often affect gay
men at body sites in which skin-to-skin contact occurs during sexual
activities.
"But because the bacteria can be spread by more casual contact, we are
also very concerned about a potential spread of this strain into the
general population.
"The potential widespread dissemination of the multi-resistant form of
USA300 into the general population is alarming."
Dr Diep said one way to avoid infection was to wash thoroughly with soap
and water, especially after sexual activities.
Professor Mark Enright, from Imperial College and St Mary's Hospital,
London, Britain's leading authority on MRSA, said: "The main reservoir
for this infection is gay men, drug users, and those involved in contact
sports, like wrestling.
"Having lots of sexual partners and making skin contact with a large
number of different people helps the infection to spread.
"In the US it is already moving into the wider community, which is very
worrying."
Prof Enright said "flesh-eating" necrotising pneumonia was difficult to
treat and half of all those infected in this way died.